The present invention relates generally to paperboard cartons for use in packaging containers such as cans or bottles for beverages. More particularly, the invention relates to a reinforced handle for such cartons.
Containers such as cans or bottles for beverages including soft drink, beer, juices and the like are commonly sold in multiple quantities packaged in a paperboard carton. For the convenience of the consumer, the carton is often provided with a handle, which quite commonly includes as a primary feature one or two slots or other apertures formed in the carton. The user inserts the hand or fingers into one or both of the slots to lift the carton. Many varieties of handles are known in the art.
Lifting a carton containing beverage cans or bottles introduces considerable stress into the paperboard from which the carton is formed. For this reason, to prevent tearing of the paperboard and failure of the carton, it is known to design carton handles with various reinforcement structures. This is often accomplished by providing two, three or more layers of paperboard in the vicinity of the handle slots.
Recently, attempts have been made to introduce into the marketplace beverage cartons wherein cans are arranged in two tiers, with corresponding cans from each tier being axially aligned. An example of such a carton can be seen by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,102. Such cartons are intended to hold relatively large numbers of cans, for example 24 to 36 cans. The contained weight of these cartons makes use of reinforced handle structures particularly advantageous.
It is usually desirable to provide the handle reinforcing flaps or panels as part of the blank for such a carton, thereby to eliminate the need to manipulate multiple pieces in the carton loading operation. A common way to accomplish this is to provide lapped top panels at opposite ends of the carton blank. To save some paperboard, one or both of the lapped panels may comprise only a portion of the completed top panel. An example of this type of handle reinforcement may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,221,041.
However, especially a large carton such as the two-tier example described above, a relatively large blank results from this approach. Thus, it is important that the addition of such reinforcing panels or flaps not significantly increase the overall size of the carton blank. This is especially true when considering the layout of blanks on the paperboard web from which the cartons are manufactured, where an increase in blank size can significantly increase the amount of paperboard required.
What is needed, therefore, is a reinforced handle structure wherein the reinforcement is accomplished using a single-piece blank. The reinforcement structure should not significantly increase the blank size. Rather, it should be relatively compact to most efficiently use layout space on the paperboard web from which the cartons are formed.